Amazon used it’s EC2 cloud service to build a 10,000-core cluster, which has made the list of the world’s Top 500 supercomputers. This wasn’t a first for the company–Amazon has already built a top supercomputer that lives in the cloud. The new computer runs an HPC-optimized application and a batch scheduling technology. The 10,000 cores [...]

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We noticed a frequent and unresolved issue for Netflix which involves Micrsoft’s Silverlight (alternative to Flash). The issue has been mentioned many times in blogs and forums–even on Microsoft’s own product forums. The error prevents users from watching Netflix streaming movies, and the error message displayed by the application also contain some “self help” instructions [...]

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During Capital Market Day, Nokia unveiled plans to overhaul the user interface design for Symbian smart phone. The chief executive of Nokia, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, stated “Symbian OS is not the problem, the user interface is.” The new user interface will show up in phones in 2010. The goal of the new design will be to [...]

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On Monday, new Canadian anti-spam and anti-spyware legislation (Electronic Commerce Protection Act) will be put to vote. The Copyright lobbies for the software and music industries have been very busy trying to make significant alterations to the bill. One area of concern for the copyright lobbies is a limitation to install DRM software on user [...]

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Barnes & Noble will launch a Google Android powered wireless device that they hope will make them competitive with Amazon.com. The device will have a 6-inch touch screen and virtual keyboard. In July, Barnes & Nobles announced that it would be returning to the e-book market with some type of digital-book store.

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AT&T is now changing it’s mind about VOIP applications. It will now allow applications such as Skype and Vonage to run on it’s 3G wireless network. Consumers will rejoice at this decision, which will tax AT&T’s system resources. Recently the Federal Communications Commission has been investigating both Apple and AT&T on how it treats VoIP [...]

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One year ago, Yahoo rolled out Messenger 9 with video conferencing abilities. It was not a strong competitor to Skype, but was an obvious direction for the IM powerhouse. With Yahoo Messenger 10, video quality will be greatly improved making the tool a strong competitor with Skype for Windows users. Yahoo Messenger 10 will not [...]

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Google Apps, a suite of premium enterprise level applications, will allow corporate BlackBerrys to have some push and sync functionality. This functionality, Google Apps Connector, will allow Gmail messages to be pushed within 60 seconds. It will also allow syncing of in-box actions such as labels and message archiving. Another added functionality will allow users [...]

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Google is currently in the process of building a replacement of its 10 year old file system, Google File System (GFS). GFS was never intended to handle all the kinds of applications that it currently governs–apps like Gmail and Youtube. The system, designed in the 90s, was made for batch-oriented applications such as web crawling [...]

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Microsoft and Nokia, once fierce enemies in the mobile industry, have decided to team up–placing Microsoft Office software on Nokia cellphones. As phones are increasingly used to do things that once only computers would do, Microsoft is charging into the mobile landscape seeking to fend off the threat from Google. Google has posed a threat [...]

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